We should be happy to stay in the EU slow lane

Monday 16 June 2008 09:15 BST

The Irish "No" to the Lisbon treaty came, paradoxically, because the EU can't take no for an answer. In 2001, Ireland rejected the earlier treaty of Nice, and was made to vote again. In 1992, the Danes rejected the treaty of Maastricht. They were brought back to class the next year, too.

And in 2005, the French and the Dutch tossed out the EU constitution. The EU's response was simply to rework it, and re-present it as the Lisbon treaty, explicitly designed to be passed not by peoples but by parliaments. European leaders were heard boasting that they'd deliberately made it "unintelligible" to smuggle it past the voters.

Ireland, however, was the only nation constitutionally obliged to put Lisbon to the vote - and suddenly the EU's very deviousness became a liability. Irish voters' single biggest objection to the treaty was the eminently sensible one that they did not understand it, and they couldn't approve something they didn't understand.

Most Europeans want the EU. They see its value in free commerce and free movement. They understand there are some problems, such as trade and climate change, which must be tackled at supranational level. But almost whenever they have been given the chance, the voters of Europe have told Brussels: no further.

The EU retorts that Lisbon's institutional streamlining was precisely so that the Union could more effectively tackle supranational challenges. That may be so - but other elements of the treaty trespassed into powers the nations should keep for themselves.

Europe's leaders must recognise that their drive for ever closer union is not shared by the people of even the most EU-friendly countries, such as Ireland. They should end it here. They won't, of course. It looks like they're going on with Lisbon. They're still proclaiming the need to "move forward" even as the voters tell them to stop.

But last week was no more than a symptom of the basic problem: that the EU is not democratic, and never can be. The only directly-elected part of the Union institutions, the parliament, is also the least powerful part. The parliament could be given more powers - but there would be no point because there is no European polity, and there never will be.

Europe, as a single entity, has none of the institutions that support genuinely democratic political life. There is no Europe-wide media, no real Europe-wide pressure groups, no Europe-wide political parties. How could it be otherwise, with two dozen main languages? Elections to the parliament turn on national issues. A British New Labour MEP may sit in the "Socialist Group" but he has more in common with a Christian Democrat than with many of his fellow socialists.

After Ireland, the EU's leaders are talking again about a "two-speed" Europe, with the Irish, the British, the Nordics and the East in the second tier. That is nothing to be afraid of. Being outside the euro has done Britain no harm. The whole EU could benefit from slowing down a bit; and if the rest can't, the slow lane is the place for us.